Jared Diamond American scientist, evolutionary biologist and geographer Date of Birth: 10.09.1937 Country: USA

Biography of Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is a renowned American scientist, evolutionary biologist, and geographer who combines multiple scientific disciplines in his work. He was born on September 10, 1937, in Boston, Massachusetts, into an intellectual Jewish family. With a physicist father and a linguist mother who also taught at school and performed piano concerts, Diamond's upbringing likely influenced his interests from an early age, combining piano playing with reading scientific works.

After graduating from Roxbury Latin School, Diamond attended Harvard College, where he received a bachelor's degree in arts. A few years later, he enrolled at the University of Cambridge, where in 1961 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis on the physiology and biophysics of human gallbladder membranes. Upon returning to Harvard, Diamond became part of a program supporting young scientists and conducted research on bird populations in New Guinea and nearby islands. It was during this time that Diamond began to notice interesting parallels and hidden connections between his two seemingly unrelated areas of study.

Over the following years, Diamond delved deeper into the study of human history and evolution, simultaneously exploring geography and evolutionary biology. The results of his research were remarkable, as he became the first scientist to provide a comprehensive analysis by incorporating not only his own field of expertise but also neighboring disciplines.

In the 1990s, Diamond became a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, a position he holds to this day. Despite being known mainly within the scientific community, Diamond decided to publish the results of his research in a book to demonstrate the fruitfulness of his interdisciplinary approach. His first book, "The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal," was released in 1992. In this book, he traced how modern human society relates to prehistoric societies known to us only through the work of scientists. The book was warmly received by critics and other scientists who largely agreed with Diamond's perspective. It received the highest prize from the Royal Society for Science Books and the famous Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the same year.

Diamond's second work, "Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality," quickly became a bestseller and was translated into several languages. The book explores the paradox of human beings, the only living creatures willing to engage in sexual contacts, expend energy and effort on this, experience fear of being caught, without having the singular goal of reproducing. Through analysis, Diamond negates contemporary attempts to explain this and concludes that human evolution, like humans themselves, is irrational and governed by its own laws rather than patterns observed in other animals.

For his third work, "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," Diamond received the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book to date, "The World Until Yesterday," describes the place of Western civilization in human history and provides examples from primitive cultures that have the potential to improve civilization.

Currently, Jared Diamond resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons. He continues to teach and write scholarly and popular science books.